Every breakdown, in one place.

The world of Testament.

Viaducts, aerial cities, crowds and the fire sequence — the one where nothing burned on the night. Its director put it plainly: the season would not have been possible without it. The shot-by-shot anatomy of two of these frames is on the breakdowns page.

A black sky in camera. A luminous dusk on screen.

Real dusk gives a camera almost nothing. Every frame here is from the delivered episode, cut against its own source material — sky replacement, a painted digital backlot, hand roto, and the tail numbers quietly replaced across the hangar coverage.

Two shots are then taken apart layer by layer, in comp order, from their real elements.

Stoning in the Temple.

The whole film runs as a split screen: the plate on top, the delivered frame underneath. A temple that ends a few metres past the actors, and a courtyard that has to keep going — columns, crowd and sky built to match the light that was really there on the day.

Walking on water.

The sequence the show's executive producer singled out. It starts in a tank on a stage under blue, and ends as open water at night. You can watch the storm arrive: the tank edge goes, the horizon extends, and the light on the water becomes the light of the shot.

A crowd you can't cast.

Temple colonnades, gateways and the sermon crowd. The hillside holds thousands of people; the call sheet held a fraction of that. The rest is built, then lit and graded until the join stops being findable.

Where it started.

The first reel we cut for the show, covering episodes six to eight. The work that runs through every season after it is already here: build the world past where the set ends, and make it obey the same light as the part that was really there.

A photoreal world, built from nothing.

Matte painting and environment work for ANT. No set to extend here — the landscape, the camp and the light are all constructed, then held to the same standard as a plate: if a frame reads as a photograph, it's finished.

Fifteen seconds, to broadcast spec.

Photoreal matte paintings and finishing for the Mazda CX-5 launch spot. Automotive is an unforgiving discipline: the product is the hero, the reflections are the performance, and there is no forgiving frame.

Anatomy of a Fire.

The fire sequence, from the beginning. We built a brick wall in a workshop and plumbed a gas flame bar through it, rehearsed on architecture, then burnt a family's possessions one piece at a time in a paddock at night — a lamp, chairs, a table of books, two guitars. 134 takes over two nights and a test day, cut to the crew's own voices calling the gas countdown, then rebuilt in comp flame by flame.

The Shape of a Spirit.

How the Pentecost sequence was made. Six shoot days and 160 takes of physical behaviour — a struck match, smoke on black, then milk and ink into a fish tank, released by dropper, syringe and brush — before any of it became the Spirit. The film traces one element from the tank to the finished shot, opens the comp script itself, and ends inside the sequence it was all built for.